


Kuru

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Introspection? Oc's having a bad time, Metaphorical cannibalism was how I described it to help name it so, hunger scar/learned a lot about controlling people are the two best options fight me, revenge and villainy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 22:04:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20785778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which Sidestep was always going to go this way





	Kuru

Heartbreak will leave Arteria hungry.  
She’s been sort of empty her whole short life really, something always gnawing gnawing gnawing away at Sidestep’s walls. Inside out, scraping things she doesn’t have a name for into fuel. Each snub from Steel or blurry flash of her reflection in a cheap washroom mirrors, every press of mundane minds chips a tiny bit away. Each loss and every victory is a little more given.

Ortega asked sometimes, when she was relaxed and somber like they get on quiet patrols what the nanovore swarms felt like and Arteria hates, hated to lie but “they took something from me” is a bad answer to give and “I’m only standing here today because I’m the same as them” is worse. A decade in the future she’ll come back to them out of spite and strange desire.  
But right now she’s still lying on the floor staring up at a dirty face stinking of rubbing alcohol and wounds gone septic. She can’t move, her only friend left could be dead and she stepped over innocent bodies to get here. The lie she tells, that she’s a good person seems less and less tempting less and less likely in the face of the power and memories rifling through her nervous system.

Arteria has been resisting this cruelty for years and Heartbreak for all their sting is just prey now, a sparrow trapped by a cat’s paw, the fly in her web. It breaks both of them when her mind finally bites down, tearing trauma out freshly bleeding.  
Arteria dreams of a life not her own, haunted by an echo of past she has known twice now.  
Arteria is exhausted and captured and dying. She has broken glass in her and all she has stolen from Heartbreak just makes her want more, makes her want to hide away.  
Arteria is greedy. Heartbreak is dead.

She gets it from her makers is a rare lucid thought between surgeries that fix nothing and drugs that burn her up. They want a meat-shield, they want a puppet, a dog to do what they tell it to. They are grasping, gross hands and commands. The Farm discards and unmakes and builds her up anew. They burn away bits of Sidestep, away like Anathema’s movie-star acid and sun kissed face. She is lonely growing angry and less resigned to her fate. Arteria has stopped helplessly wondering what they will make her when everything good and Sidestep is gone and started to think of what she’s going to become, how she’s going to take everything from them.  
They made her like this she soothes. Made her a yawning void, a fault line, a chasm to pull everything into and want more. She flicks through the minds that pass when she can remember enough to, searching for the weaknesses she’ll need. It’s less a web and more a trap door now but it’s really just another waiting game and she was designed to play those. It’s only famine _for now.___

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, Arteria Red was named so I could make her villain name Vena Cava and have it be a shitty pun and it was in the process of writing this I went o shit my name is also Arte(mis) (the colour red) and that's just what sort of pseudonym I like apparently


End file.
